Little bigman.

Don't believe everything you think.

[Carlos @agent_of_change]

Laura Bicker, BBC China correspondent, on the disaster at Gyirong Port on the Nepal–Xizang border: “Shocking footage isn’t being shown in China – and we know little about victims there.”

Numerous people in China have pointed out that the footage is, in fact, all over Chinese platforms; indeed, the very video in the BBC’s own report was released by the Chinese port authorities. So the sequence is: 1) the Chinese state published the clip; 2) the BBC ran the clip; 3) the BBC published a story about how the Chinese state is suppressing the clip.

@AndyBxxx has made another point worth noting: Chinese media doesn’t operate on the basis of “if it bleeds, it leads”. You won’t see grieving relatives and footage of bodies looped for 24 hours. The BBC treats the absence of disaster pornography as evidence of a cover-up rather than a different (and frankly much better) editorial culture.

The article concedes that Beijing has launched “a massive rescue operation involving hundreds of emergency workers”. Even the International Campaign for Tibet, an NED-sponsored Washington-based lobby group, is recorded here “praising the work of first responders”. Xi Jinping personally chaired an emergency meeting to coordinate it. Chinese media has provided “daily updates on the missing and the dead”, plus updates on the rescue operation and on the barrier lake at risk of overflowing. It has shown rescue teams scaling mountains and cliff faces and crossing raging rivers.

Premier Li Qiang was “quickly dispatched to the region” – a level of responsiveness from the top leadership that those of us in the West can only dream of. Compare for example the US response to Hurricane Katrina, or the British government’s response to the Grenfell disaster. From all of that, the article arrives at the phrase “muted response” 🤷🏽

The BBC reports that local CPC members have been asked to step up and help with relief efforts, and provide “emotional guidance or psychological support to affected residents”. This is predictably framed as an operation to “stem any signs of discontent”.

Our intrepid reporter finally reveals her motive with a single clause: “Tibet, which Beijing annexed in the 1950s”. A-ha. It turns out this is a story about British state media, not Chinese state media.

Tibet has been part of China since the 13th century. Taking advantage of the chaos of the collapse of the Qing dynasty, the British invaded Tibet in 1904, at which point they came up with the formula of recognising Chinese “suzerainty” over Tibet while asserting that the region was “independent in internal administration” – which de facto meant that the British could do whatever they wanted there. Incidentally, Britain didn’t abandon that formula until 2008, when it finally recognised China’s sovereignty over the region.

If the BBC is going to insist on a formulation of “Tibet, which Beijing annexed”, it should, for the sake of consistency, also refer to “Cornwall, which London annexed”, since this took place around the same time as Tibet’s absorption into the Yuan Dynasty.

The article goes on to repeat tired tropes about “the Chinese government oppressing and persecuting Tibetans”, albeit without going into the nature of this oppression, which includes raising literacy levels from 5 percent to 98 percent; 15 years’ publicly funded education; the highest per capita central government transfers in China; the elimination of absolute poverty; the provision of modern infrastructure, health care and social services; and impressive efforts to protect and promote Tibetan language and culture.

What doesn’t get a single mention is the cause of the disaster. This was a flash flood in the fastest-warming mountain range on earth, in a region where glacial lakes are multiplying and bursting. There is a genuine story here about climate change coming for the Himalayas and the hundreds of millions who depend on their rivers, but the BBC instead chooses to run with the usual anti-China rubbish.

Solidarity with the people of China and Nepal affected by this disaster, and with everyone working to save them. And shame on a state broadcaster that chooses slander over solidarity.

[Kerry Burgess @KerryBurgess]

Absolutely deranged.
The US needs to introduce laws to protect low IQ people from political propaganda.

[Zack Polanski @ZackPolanski]

Greens win in Dover.

Spectacular! 💚😍

[Seyed Mohammad Marandi @s_m_marandi]

There will be no normalization in the Strait of Hormuz unless the Gaza Holocaust comes to a complete end and Iran's rights are fully acknowledged.

https://t.co/CZHDAouHPu

[Sony Thăng @nxt888]

You want to know what actual free speech looks like in the American context?

Edward Snowden told the truth about what the government was doing to its own citizens.

He is in exile.

Chelsea Manning told the truth about what the military was doing in Iraq, including footage of a helicopter crew killing journalists and laughing.

She was imprisoned.

Julian Assange published documents showing the gap between what Western governments said and what they did.

He spent years in an embassy and then a prison, and the country that lectures the world about press freedom led the effort to destroy him.

Meanwhile the people who lied about weapons of mass destruction and launched a war that killed hundreds of thousands:

They are on the speaking circuit.

They are on television as analysts.

They have libraries named after them.

This is not a paradox. This is the system working correctly.

Free speech, in the empire's operating definition, means you can say anything that doesn't threaten the machine.

The moment the speech has real consequences for real power:

You discover exactly how free it is.

[Mahmoud Al-Qudsi @mqudsi]

omg that's war criminal Adi Karni, by coincidence I was just looking him up yesterday. He filmed himself saying "bye bye mosque" while blowing up a masjid in Gaza and @ireallyhateyou posted a thread of him traveling the world after killing kids in Gaza ⬇

[Mikey 💚 @MikeyFromMidgar]

Asda has taken my last remaining money for an order due yesterday evening that never arrived. I have been left with no food and no funds to buy groceries. Next payday isn’t until 7th September. I need Asda to take ownership of their mistake and to resolve this urgently.

My support ticket number is 06513955. The Asda app is stuck on 'order prepared'. I also need an urgent call back from a supervisor/manager to process an immediate refund. Asda says on its app it only takes payment when the order is delivered, that is not the case. They always take payment the moment after I place an order. The funds have left my bank account.

I’ve tried calling their helpline, who initially said it was late but still on its way. Then when it didn’t I called the second time they told me they’ve been having “technical issues”. That the order will be cancelled but he was really vague and evasive when I asked when I’d get a refund.

I’ve raised a refund request & been emailing Asda customer services but nothing is happening. My bank can’t start chargeback process for 6 days and even that can take up to 12 weeks for a refund #Asda

Asda standard refunds take up to 14 *working days* and don’t usually clear on a weekend.

Stores are very quick to take a customers money but always dither and make it difficult for customers that ask for refunds. I’ve never had this before in all the years I’ve shopped with Asda never once had an entire order not arrive.

@asda @AsdaServiceTeam

[Little bigman. @IaiD52]

@SenRandPaul Utter shite.

[simon maginn @simonmaginn]

Simon Sebag Montefiore is an enthusiastic proponent of the 'antisemitism crisis' fraud that was deployed to politically assassinate Corbyn and the anti-genocide left.
And that's the end of that.
#ItWasAScam

[Pamphlets @PamphletsY]

🚨🇺🇸 BREAKING — This Isn’t Cuba.

This Is Poverty In Ultra-Capitalist California.

[Little bigman. @IaiD52]

@reggiebblue They are not crazy psychotics. The USA is the problem.

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

This is just pure unadulterated propaganda by the BBC.

And it takes literally 2 seconds to debunk: go on Xiaohongshu (or any other Chinese social networks), type a keyword related to the mudslide (I typed "泥石流", "mudslide") and you'll see thousands of posts with footage about it - including from state media (the first post in my screenshot is from People's Daily)🤷

Even crazier - which shows the extent to which the BBC thinks its audience are complete idiots - their lead example of footage that supposedly isn't being shown in China is… footage that comes from China!

This is how they open their article:

"The dramatic footage was almost impossible to miss. A torrent of water tearing through Gyirong Port, one of the main border crossings between Nepal and Tibet, sweeping away all in its path as hundreds of people fled for their lives.
The scenes, captured by CCTV cameras, quickly spread on social media and onto screens around the world.
Except here, in China."

We've all seen this footage, which is Chinese CCTV footage, released first in China, and extremely widely spread on Chinese social media (it's in the 3rd post on my Xiaohongshu screenshot below 👇).

It's literally insane: they think you're stupid enough not to notice that they're using Chinese footage as their lead example to claim China isn't showing footage 🤦

This also all points to a deeper issue: China does have a completely different and largely insulated media ecosystem with little overlap with Western media, and extremely little reach in the West.

Which means it's trivially easy for outlets like the BBC to make false claims about what's happening in China that:
a) their readers will never check: it's actually difficult to for foreigners to access Chinese social networks, if only for the language barrier.
b) won't be challenged by the other side: Chinese media has so little reach in the West that there's essentially no one to push back. It's like lying about someone who isn't in the room.

That's the irony when you read about "Chinese propaganda": the bigger issue is that it actually doesn't really exist - at least not in a material way - and therefore falsehoods about China can be written with an impunity that they could never get away with if they were writing about, say, France or Germany.

As I keep repeating, this is actually mostly bad for the West because - given the importance of China in the world today - this is a country you simply cannot afford to misunderstand. Bad journalism about China is a strategic liability.

So, in a somewhat ironic way, if there were one genuine "China threat" worth worrying about, it's this: that China is not great at communicating about itself with the outside world and Western publics are left with garbage BBC articles to understand it.

[Mehdi Hasan @mehdirhasan]

This is what me and my family put up with almost every day and yet some liberals like @shannonrwatts were mocking me for raising the issue of Islamophobia earlier.

[Muhammad Mazen @mhmd_s09]

The media is ignoring the fact that both Israeli and international Doctors are reporting that Israel is illegally organ harvesting from Palestinians.

[Wide Awake Media @wideawake_media]

The United Nations REALLY wants you to forget that it invited Ghislaine Maxwell to speak as an "expert" on numerous occasions.

[Mike Hudema @MikeHudema]

The world's biggest companies have caused $28 trillion in climate damage, a new study estimates: https://t.co/3clxDDZCym

Read that again.

Time for the people that are fueling this crisis to pay for the damage they're causing.

#ActOnClimate

[AIPAC Tracker @TrackAIPAC]

Israel is still murdering children in Gaza.
Israel is still murdering children in Gaza.
Israel is still murdering children in Gaza.
Israel is still murdering children in Gaza.
Israel is still murdering children in Gaza.
Israel is still murdering children in Gaza.

[Margaret Kimberley @freedomrideblog]

The U.S. stepped in to protect a white supremacist at a European university.

[creative scorpio @vinivinidogo]

With all of this on tape..so you know they DGAF about getting caught

Any lawsuits will be paid by taxpayers & not the cops